Design Log.mp2
'Multiplayer-Evolution Ruleset (MP2) Design Log' Other MP2 resources: *''click here for'' Multiplayer II Game Manual *''click here for'' Multiplayer II Summary - a synopsis list of MP2's changes over MP1 *''click here for'' Game Play Overview *''click here for'' [[Multiplayer_II_Design_Summary|'MP2 Design Manifesto']] - guiding principles, etc., of contributors working on this branch. 'DESIGN LOG and DETAIL LIST' AND REASONS FOR ADJUSTMENTS: 'I. Technologies' '1. Tech costs changed.' Explanation: Formerly, a formula did tech costs. It did well until late-game, then tech pace was too fast. Effect: First techs cost 4 bulbs less (28–4 =24). Next techs are unchanged until Democracy/Gunpowder. Generally, bulb costs go up 25% at Democracy/Gunpowder and +5% for each major tier after. Last techs are +50% except the "final tech" Stealth is double. The result is that after mid-game, new units can be featured, used, and played without becoming obsolete too fast. '2. Voyage of Darwin' Explanation: Changed to increase Trade like Colossus. Cost: 200 shields. Philosophy and Darwin could finish the tech tree on 0% science. Some players wanted Darwin gone or One-player-only. Player-only awards from Great Wonders and Huts were long ago forbidden from Multiplayer design principles to eliminate “ruleset luck” from deciding the game. The solution is to make Darwin do something else. Darwin becomes a replacement for Colossus going obsolete, and represents a breakthrough in trade, science, technology, and products. Effect: Previously, most late-game tech was not being used: new tech too rapidly replaced old tech. Now, the stages of late-mid-, early-late-, late-, and end-game are exciting new phases of the game that can actually be experienced and enjoyed. 3. Restricted Abuse of Philosophy Gives a free advance but coalition abuse is curbed. Free tech awarded if discovered before Turn 85 (death of Socrates), but only if the player has none of the following: Industrialization, Electricity, Conscription. Explanation: This was the only solution that succeeded in preserving different styles of play while not destroying original Multiplayer balance. Loners and purists unaware of MP's re-balance wanted to restrict Philosophy bonuses. This faction disliked how Philosophy accelerated the late-game with “gangs of backwards nations” discovering more advanced techs than nations with scientific infrastructure. However, players familiar with the original MP know that “Philosophy for Everyone” was an important re-balance for lost trade routes to sustain mid-game pace. Other proposals failed to accurately upgrade the Multiplayer experience for all players and styles of play. This was the only proposed solution which met requirements to balance all the points above. We must keep in mind that the majority of players in the world of massive multiplayer, as well as noobs and late-joiners, use Philosophy as a diplomatic bargaining chip to be relevant and get influence, alliance, and protection. It lets them have a chance to survive, learn to play, and keep the community growing. It increases cooperation, diplomacy, and interaction in the game. Effect: Before 400BCE (T85), Philosophy gives bonus tech only if you do not have any of the 3 techs needed for “mid-game.” This prevents abuse and lets Philosophy be used as intended. It keeps diplomatic scheming and slinging that add strategy, surprise, fun, and depth. An extremely important Multiplayer design decision is preserved: to use Philosophy and Marco Polo to compensate lost trade routes. Game notifications begin warning players of the coming expiration on T79. '4. Space Flight gives a vision bonus.' Unit and city vision increase. Explanation: Originally, the Apollo Wonder gave full vision, but it was removed from Multiplayer because it was OP for only a single nation out of 50+ nations to get this power. The excitement of Space Age tech left the game. Effect: In the very late game, there is now incentive to discover Space Flight to gain better vision. In ultra-late game this introduces the excitement of satellite surveillance technology, as originally intended. '5. Electricity removes Fog of War inside your own borders.' Explanation: Electricity allows for lights. Now you can see. Effect: The default border settings for most multiplayer games have always been SEE_INSIDE, in which case this change makes no difference. The reason those settings are used is because 2x movement can exploit poor border vision. This now provides an interesting alternative to allow games that have a "Dark Ages" for the early game, followed by restoration to normal play later. Such games would have less comfortable certainty in "booming past" the early ages of history, perhaps resulting in ancient and feudal warfare being more common. 'II. Units '1. Vision adjustments' Made to bring Vision/Movement ratio closer to 1:1 like in 1x ruleset. Explanation: The ratio of vision/movement affects game play and tactics. Rulesets higher than 1x movement typically adjust vision upwards in order to preserve proportional balance. Consider the ability to see a unit which is 1 turn away from being able to attack. Physics historically gave birth to telescopes and binoculars. Effect: '' A typical 2mv unit now has 1.4x vision instead of 1x. Physics brings it to 2x. The ability to see where you're going or to anticipate the arrival of enemy units is now more in line with the balanced proportions of original 1x rules. Please note there are also vision bonuses from Forts, Mountains, Lighthouse, and Space Flight. '2. Restrictinfra re-balance. '''Enemy rails only act like roads, while roads can still be used by all. OPTIONAL SETTING. Explanation: A 'middle ground' compromise to restrictinfra was achieved. Previously, our choice was between two extremes. Some claimed that it's ridiculous for armies to travel the world at light speed conquering dozens of nations in a single turn. Different nations like Russia, China, Europe, and the Americas have incompatible rails and can disable a rail if an enemy intends to use it. Others claim that making enemy rails and roads act like they don't even exist, was extremely unrealistic and also begging for stalemated late-games. Both sides were right. Behold the holy grail: the sweet spot in the middle. Effect: Late game strategy was dominated by paranoia over rail systems. Rail invasions ended the game right as players were getting to “the good part of the game.” Now there is an option. (Restrictinfra=OFF preserves Classic behavior settings.) '3. Railroad move speed ' Changed to 9x, MagLevs available with Superconductors for unlimited moves. Explanation: It can be ridiculous for armies to travel the world at light speed. Railroads are now given a more than generous 9x, which is three times faster/farther than roads. Meanwhile, the MagLev terrain improvement was imported from Civ2civ3, because: 1) It gives purpose to an empty late game technology, 2) In a true “final end game”, it helps break stalemate, 3) Fans of infinite movement rails still get to have them. Effect: Rails remain excellent for rapid transport. Ultra-late MagLevs impart advantages to break stalemates. '4. Bribe cost ' ½ cost correctly adjusted to include all non-military civilian units, not just Settlers. Explanation: Bribing civilians is easier than bribing military. The ½ bribe cost rule goes all the way back to when Settlers were the only civilian unit. Failure to properly port the UnitFlags resulted in Workers having the same bribe costs as military units. In reality, the most bribeable unit of all is an underpaid worker. Effect: Workers wandering far from home are realistic bribe targets again. '5. Mountain Vision' Land Units on a mountain can see +1 tile. Effect: This provides more realism and tactical interest to the game. It slightly patches the 1.4:2 Vision/Movement ratio in the early game, but makes it a tactical patch instead of taken for granted. '6. Nukes get 24 movement points.' Available with Space Flight. Prior to this, "Atom Bomb" is available with Nuclear Fission and Manhattan Project and is deliverable by Heavy Bomber and above. Explanation 1: Cost of a unit is based on its power. For a Nuke, range and 'threat area' are not linear. Compared to other units, a Nuke's “threat area” is a much stronger component of its overall power. Giving nukes 2x moves would give them 4x the threat area (A=πr2). 24 moves give the Nuke a 1.5x increase in range and a 2.25x increase to targeted area. Right between 1.5x and 2.25x is 2x, which is the balance point we're looking for in a 2x ruleset. Effect 1: Nukes can reach 1.5x more range and 2.25x more area than in classic Freeciv. Explanation 2: It was unrealistic imbalanced that one tech after World War era Bombers, nuclear ICBMs were available. The game now makes Atom Bomb available with Nuclear Fission, but it must be delivered by a Bomber. Effect 2: 1) '''In the early era of nuclear armaments, cost commitment requires a Bomber and a Bomb, '''2) '''Range is reduced to the range of the best Bomber the player has available, making investments in the advancing line of Bombers more relevant. '''3) Early use of nukes has more defensibility, as Bombers are reachable by Fighters, unlike Nuclear Missiles. Overall, slight increases to playability and realism without too great a change in game play. '7. Knights given two bonuses' To restore value and re-balance the ”new” introduction of Elephants/Crusaders. Explanation: Two reasons led to the Knight getting two small bonuses: 1. The Knight used to be the first mobile unit who attacked at 4, but then Classic ruleset added Elephants with similar strength but available far sooner. Polytheism then led straight to Monotheism, which upgrades Elephants to Crusaders while giving strong economic benefits. This "orphaned" Chivalry's place in the tech tree, bypassing the whole Feudal Age. 2. Since ruleset coding did not distinguish a separate class of foot units, mounted units' superiority against foot units had been coded as higher general attack strength. But a defending Knight who is also mounted should do far better than 6% survival against another Knight, since they are both on horseback. Effect: To restore Knights to relevance and balance, two small bonuses were given. '''''This doesn't change how Knights relate to most units. 1. Knights defend at 3 against mounted units. This gives an equal chance of survival when attacked by a more primitive Chariot, and 26% against an attacking Knight. 2. Because of their historical noble status and vows, bands of Knights had the discipline and integrity to attack towns without pillage and murder; this virtue often swayed allegiance by the citizens. Therefore, the Knight can attack towns without population reduction. (Cities still lose 1 population when changing ownership, however.) 7a. Legions improved. Legions gain the ability to make Fortresses. Also the ability to build roads on non-domestic tiles. Explanation: Two reasons led to the Legion getting two non-combat bonuses: 1) Though the unit is close to balanced, its cost effectiveness, research commitment, slow speed, and availability of more effective units in a short time after — all these together made the Legion not quite attractive enough to get used very often. 2) '''Real Legions were feared and famous for their highly disciplined engineering skills: on military campaigns, they rapidly constructed roads and bridges, and constructed forts nightly when on the march. We had a slightly neglected unit that needed a slight buff, but already had well-balanced cost and combat stats. It was missing its distinctive abilities for which it was famous. Both problems get solved with an elegant solution. Note: Legions build roads only on non-domestic tiles for two reasons: '''1) They were proud warriors and not domestic slave workers, 2) It would be OP to substitute Workers with an A4 D2 military unit for only +10 shields. Effect: The Legion has no improvement to combat stats. The ability to make forts and roads outside one's borders gives a bonus that transforms this unit from a forgotten unit into a special, relevant, and distinctive unit. '8. Bribe and Sabotage bug fix.' Aircraft, nukes, helicopters, and missiles can't be bribed or sabotaged. Explanation: Developers made an “Unbribable” flag to fix this bug, but Classic and Multiplayer never received the fix. Effect: You can no longer bribe a nuke or cruise missile and turn it around to go attack the city it came from. 9. OneAttack flag deprecated OA-flag eliminated after a series of historical developments rendered it totally dysfunctional. ' Helicopters and Bombers no longer have "OneAttack" and can attack multiple times and/or move after an attack.' Explanation: To understand the necessity of this change requires a long history lesson in different versions of Civ and Freeciv. This issue is deep enough to fill pages, but we'll try to summarize it in one page. One paragraph Synopsis. What went wrong with “OneAttack” (OA)? OA was an over-correction to high-move/high-attack units in a turn-based simultaneous-move environment. Developers knew this and did fixes on non-classic rulesets, but Multiplayer ruleset didn't receive any. Years later, changes to the server and the play-mechanics made a poor solution totally dysfunctional. OA-units needed a complete overhaul. After finally deprecating OA, each unit must be tested to tune a proper balance that is neither under-powered nor OP. A Brief History of how OA-units got sick then died. Freeciv has a fundamental built-in contradiction in its mechanics: it is both simultaneous-move and turn-based. This creates fundamental issues. Through regulation they are improvable but not solvable. One can attempt to regulate and reduce problems while improving fair playability. The ancient OA-flag is such an attempt. In an environment that is both turn-based and simultaneous, some felt that units may be OP if they have a) high attack, b) high movement. The units which fit these criteria are: Fighter, Bomber, Helicopter, Stealth Fighter, Stealth Bomber. A decision was made where high-movement units attacking at 10+ were given the OA-flag (Helicopter, Bomber, Stealth Bomber). This was oversimplified, heavy-handed, crude and dirty. The result? a) The units <10 (Fighters and Stealth Fighters) became more powerful than the more expensive units, and also became the only unrestricted high-move high-attack units, b) Helicopter, Bomber, and Stealth Bomber lost more than half their original value, but kept their doubled costs. These units were amputated to attack only once yet still cost far more than units with many attacks. OA-units still held surprise tactical use in the semi-RTS environment of 3 minute simultaneous turns. On rare occasions, they were useful in spite of their overpriced ineffective in-game stats. Why? Because of a meta-game dynamic: scarcity in time/focus/attention dynamics. They had rare usefulness inside the little “cracks and holes” of an environment where you had to quickly make your moves in a rushed format that didn't always give the opponent enough time to react. They were used only under a “meta-game” rush-and-surprise dynamic. These units were no longer what they were supposed to be. They only had any use when quick clever RTS play allowed a player to use an OA-unit in the last seconds of a turn, then give an instant GO TO and rescue the unit when TC came only seconds later. The irony is that the only worth of an OA-unit was that the worthlessness of the unit is what made it useful for surprise. It was so ridiculous that in the last 10 seconds of a turn, many experts had the habit of selecting Fighters ready to retaliate. This made enemy OA-units worthless again. If you didn't do it, those OA-units became useful only because you did not engage in meta-game RTS! That's right. The possible value of these units only came from another player not doing quick RTS in the last seconds of a turn. In short-turn Freeciv, OA-units only had relevance by living inside these dark cracks, much like a centipede. But the game still worked: Perhaps your ally distracts your enemy elsewhere while you make a last second RTS-bombing and a quick GO TO in the last seconds. Only under this RTS psychological head-game scenario did the OA-flag and OA-units keep a dim shadow of their original role and value. Pure abstract facts tell a story: OA-units lose all moves after attacking, can attack far LESS times than cheaper “less powerful” units, have an extra turn of recycle time on unit healing, are exposed to instant death retaliation from much cheaper older tech units, and to top it all off, are double priced !! The OA-flag was not a subtle correction: it made stronger units inferior to weaker units while still costing more. Here's the truth: the units were close to balanced and properly priced before OA-flag, and at the end of the game, were the preferred method for winning it. This made them feared, and some complained loud enough to get this dirty compromise “fix” which left the units half serviceable. The situation was left like that. Ruleset gurus knew something was terminally ill, and started curing OA-units in their own rulesets. But Multiplayer was left dysfunctional. But wait, there's more. It gets worse. Three things happened. The situation went from bad to wrecked. 1) Longturn became one of the preferred formats for expert play. 2) Version 2.3 introduced UWT to manage RTS issues. 3) Massive multiplayer accelerated late-game pace, invalidating the time window of half-usefulness that OA-units had. OA failure was complete. The units lost all original roles and value. 4) The “removal” of these units hurt the carefully designed late-game balance. This balance meant to gradually shift away from a defensive bias into: ► A late game where offense and defense finally equalize, ► A large menu of unique tactical abilities can mix into clever chess moves to break stalemates. There was a four-headed monster of “OneAttack” + Longturn + UWT + closed tech-windows. It degenerated these units to extinction. The late-game became the least tactical part of the game, when before it was the most tactical ! The diluted tactical portfolio resulted in bluntly stupid stack wars consisting of Howitzers, Mech. Inf and Stealth Fighters. In small steps so slow that no one noticed, late game Civ had changed from a thing of genius tactics into something broken. New people came and didn't know any better. Hobbyists migrated to other rulesets. Multiplayer late-game was left in a wasteland. This change must be done to bring back the original genius, balance, and beauty of the late game. 10. Air unit ZoC and Unreachability. * Fighter type units do NOT prevent units from going to adjacent tiles (ZoC). * Non-Fighter type Air units do NOT protect land units on the same tile from being attacked. Explanation: Rulesets allow two options for Fighters. They can be: a) impotent – a Fighter can't provide defensive ground support, unable to protect a Worker from a vet Warrior, or b) overpowered/unreachable – a Fighter can block 10 Armors from a Worker. Multiplayer went with option (b). This was always a dirty compromise. Air superiority and defensive air support got represented through the Unreachable effect, even if this creates the possibility for rare but ridiculous exploits. Exploits are more rare than the need for normal defensive air cover, and that's why we need option (b). But if we choose option (b), is it smart to make the OP Unreachable Fighter even more OP by giving it ZoC over adjacent tiles it does not occupy? Trimming ZoC removes 8/9 (88%) of the abusive exploit potential. On the other hand, it is ridiculous for an AWACS, Balloon, or a Bomber to prevent land units from engaging each other. The problem was that Freeciv server forced all Unreachable units to be equal in whether they protect a tile or not. To get around this, MP2 takes advantage of SCL's "NeverProtects" patch. Fighter types remain unreachable, but using a server with the patch now allows all other Air units to be programmed as unreachable but not protective of other units on the same tile. Effect: (1') Fighters can't exert ZoC over unoccupied tiles. ('2) AWACS, Bombers, and Balloons are Unreachable but do not protect other units on the same tile. Other land units on the same tile may be attacked and killed from underneath them, while the air units remain untouched and unreached. '11. Para-drop for Paratroopers adjusted' 2x area coverage to be proportional to 2x-movement. Para-drop ranges goes to 14. Explanation: Keeping Para-drop at 1x move rate made Paratroopers weak in MP 2x rules. We raised range from 10mv to 14mv, giving 2x more target area than MP 1x. (Play-testing revealed that 1x range made the unit underpowered compared to the same unit in MP 1x rules. But 2x range made 4x target area – an overpowered unit compared to MP 1x.) Effect: With 2x target area, Paratroopers become a relevant late-game unit for a 2x move ruleset. With this and other late game units now being useful again, the late-game has its full menu of tactical options finally functioning! '12. Multipurpose Marines.' Can attack FROM air/land/sea TO air/land/sea. ' ''Explanation: A simple modification improves 3 problems. '''1. The first problem is that the strongest foot soldier in the game – neither an improvement over the Alpine in defence, nor over Cavalry in attack – came much later than both, making them relatively weaker and not a "breakthrough upon arrival." They move worse, and expire sooner. Except for a short time window where Marines might be useful in amphibious attacks, they were a mediocre unit whose effectiveness rapidly expired, leaving a blank void in late game foot units. 2. The game's abstract simplification of unit abilities forced a lack of interactive balance between land/air/sea tactical combinations. 3. Air units' Unreachable-flag is slightly overpowered but has to be retained because it prevents even worse problems. Real Marines have a mission of land/air/sea warfare that is sung in the lyrics of Hymn of the US Marine Corps – “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli, we fight our country's battles, in the air, on land, and sea.” Real Marines are multi-purpose and heavily equipped with diverse weaponry, capable of land/air/sea engagements. Freeciv had a late-game which was suffering from a) expired usefulness of foot soldiers, b) no utilitarian units to plug holes in design, c) unrealistic exploits and gaps in land/air/sea interactions, and d) the most powerful late-game foot unit was overpriced, under-powered, and expired too early. It was a "Perfect Storm" for balancing many facets of the game with one simple fix. Effect: Marines can mortar sea units from land, board and attack from Helicopters or Transports, and use anti-air armaments from land or air or sea. Marines attack at half strength against Sea and Air, giving for example a 14% chance of success against a Fighter. These odds are not “game busting” and they're not supposed to be. They fix the impossibility of many land-air-sea interactions and solve gridlocks and exploits that were abusive only because the exploiter knew it was 100% impossible to counter. Exception: Marines may not attack Submarines. To keep their patch-fixing "special ops" abilities functional into the late game, the vet-3 level elite Marine becomes a specialized Navy SEAL with a 250% multiplier instead of the standard 200%, and promotions odds are slightly increased (see in-game or online Manual.) '13. Escort Fighters added.' ' A:3 D:5 M:18 FP:2 Fuel: 2 turns. Cost: 80 shields.' Explanation: The lack of diversity in air units left a poverty of tactical combinations and mixtures, and did not represent the variety of air units which were invented precisely for that reason. The unrealistic lack of Escort Fighters left Bombers overpriced, defenseless, and almost never used. The Escort Fighter is a twin-engine defensive Fighter with larger size, fuel capacity, and damage absorption. It's better for long-range missions and defence. It can accompany a Bomber on its mission and escort it home on the next turn, and is serviceable for longer-range offensive capabilities. Effect: The higher cost and weaker attack of this unit–especially against itself–means that Fighters remain the king of the skies, as explained below. The more expensive Escort Fighter is useful for less common strategic purposes, like helping Bombers become relevant again. This unit helps air combat go from a one-unit game of checkers to a multi-unit game of chess. This does not create an OP exploit for Bombers, as two Fighters against an escorted Bomber will sacrifice 0 or 60 shields in order to kill 190 shields. Likewise, 2 Fighters can still defeat a single Escort Fighter hovering in a defensive support role, at a decisively favorable 41:80 attrition ratio. Stacking multiple Escort Fighters has rapidly diminishing value since each attacking Fighter has a 31% chance of triggering Killstack. Fighters' more frequent use in combat also gives higher vet levels. To conclude, this is a more specialized unit for long-range runs, protecting bombing raids, or giving ground support, but likely limited to use in areas that do not have more than a couple of enemy Fighters who can counterstrike. Like all Fighter-types in all MP rulesets, the Escort Fighter prevents land and sea units from attacking the tile it is on. '14. Medium Bombers added.' ' A:6 D:2 M:12 FP:2 Fuel: 2 turns. Cost: 85 shields.' Explanation: Zero diversity in air units gave no tactical combinations. Fighters were used as the 'real bombers', while Bombers were never used. Between the Fighter's attack of 4 and the Bomber's attack of 12, there was a huge vacuum. The Fighter was the only unit in the mid-game skies, while the Bomber was essentially broken. That left an air game equivalent to a ground game with only Chariots. A game with only one piece. Checkers, not chess. An age of air superiority took place where a single unit did both fighting and bombing alike, then stronger ground units suddenly made it mostly obsolete until Stealth. The Medium Bomber was a no-brainer to add, because it fixed many problems. No longer does the Fighter go through a short stage of OP then rapidly obsolete. Continuity returns to the late-game arms race. The Medium Bomber is able to continue air wars against ground units in late-mid and early-late game, while giving the Fighter a longer life-span as the premier counterstrike unit to stop it. Effect: We used to have a simpleton scenario of a single air unit arriving, being OP for a short while, then quickly becoming useless. Now we get a truly balanced tactical game of many possibilities, just by introducing a single unit. Just like musket+cannon+dragoon create a three-way dynamic, the air war now has similar dynamics. The lighter duties and more affordable cost of the Medium Bomber make it a complement to the later Heavy Bomber, rather than becoming obsolete. T''he Medium Bomber is unreachable by land and sea units but doesn't block attacks on other units on the same tile.'' '15. Bombers updated.' A:12 D:3 M:16 FP:2 Fuel: 2 turns. Cost: 120 shields. Renamed “Heavy Bomber” to distinguish it from the Medium Bomber. The ancient OA-flag is what caused the Bomber's flaws. Over time, other changes made it worse. This is how it ended up totally wrecked—by not evolving with other changes. How can we fix it while keeping true to its role? The big fix isn't in the unit itself, but in deprecating OA from MP2, and adding the other air units. Now this unit finds a new role and purpose because how all the other units relate. Defence Strength is raised to 3''' – maybe a moot point since half-priced Fighters still beat it in combat.. For what it's worth, '''3 defence better represents the Heavy Bomber's mass, greater damage absorption, and multiple gunner stations. An undamaged Heavy Bomber now has a hope to defend against a Fighter (24% instead of 1%). But what this means is that more than one Fighter is needed to shoot down multiple Bombers. Interestingly, the higher 3-defence helps the Fighter last longer! How? From finely balanced rock-paper-scissors – the Escort Fighter's 3-attack and high cost make it a bad choice against undamaged Heavy Bombers. This means the Fighter remains relevant later into the game as the standard air interceptor. All four mid-game air units stay relevant rather than becoming useless when a newer air or ground unit becomes available. This unit returns to action after years in a coma. The Heavy Bomber is unreachable by land and sea units but doesn't block attacks on other units on the same tile. Strategic Bomber added. A13: D:4 M:20 FP:2 Fuel: 2 turns. Cost 135 shields. "Strategic Bomber". Previously the game had 38 units in the first half of the tech tree and only 21 in the latter half, in spite of the latter half being when the "Grand Finale" of wars was to take place. Adding realistic units that really existed, closes more gaps and creates more diversity of strategy in tech choices and unit strategies. This unit is simply a mid-point in strength, range, and cost, along the upgrade line for Bombers. Available with Rocketry. The Strategic Bomber is unreachable by land and sea units but doesn't block attacks on other units on the same tile. '16. Anti-aircraft Artillery added.' A:1 D:1 M:2 FP:2. 3X Attack, 4X defence vs "Air". Cost: 50 shields. Explanation: MP2's goal keeps classic familiarity. We justifiably added 2 units to fix gaps in game balance. Why add more? A new unit like this needs justification. Now there are 4 mid-game air units. The mid-game is more playable and not forced to “make more Fighters than all the burritos in Mexico & Texas!” But an existing problem became obvious: 1) inability to create air defences until Rocketry, 2) Those defences are unmovable. In the old MP, Air wars went through jolting stages and shifting balance in tech power, so it was less obvious. But there were constant complaints about a hole in the game: Unreachability by Ground was the only way to represent proper Air support, but it created unrealistic exploits with no tactical counter. Counters should be a unit available before Rocketry! One look at reality shows this is accurate. But adding a unit that can counter Air is hard. It is easy to ruin game balance or MP familiarity. Some suggested a counter-unit which dominates against Air. Research and play-testing proved this should not be the case. Anti-aircraft Artillery did not dominate, but only provided moderate defense. An anti-air unit that makes all air units worthless is neither realistic nor what we're trying to achieve. Iterative brainstorming produced a candidate to balance all goals. The AAA is a 2FP unit that attacks and defends at 1, except against Air, where it attacks at 3 and defends at 4. For almost the same price as a Fighter, you get a 50% chance against Fighters. It can't fly, is reachable by everything, only moves 2, is almost useless against anything but air units, and even then only 50% likely to survive against a standard Fighter. Wouldn't you rather build a Fighter for 10 more shields? Well, you probably should! This is not a game balance-buster to spam against air units. It's a slow unit that when it finally arrives, has a decent chance to take out the first Fighter who attacks, but not the second. It diverts 50 shields away from other important purchases, requires time to move into place and tactical anticipation of where your opponent might strike. Not surprisingly, this is exactly how real AAA were deployed, with moderate but not amazing success. For the same price, you could have bought a unit that defends against land or sea attacks, or can be offensive. If this is all it does, why add it? Well, it also provides another escape clause regarding Unreachable exploitation, and it provides a small 6/5 attrition sweet spot for resisting a “spam-air-only” strategy. Effect: You can spend 50 on an AAA that's usually less effective than 50 spent on an Alpine or Fighter. But it can provide a slight edge in odds in special situations, and help resist Air-only strategies. This restores balance to air/land relationships and gives more depth to air/air (Bombers counter AAA.) Note: this particular unit, unlike others, is in alpha-candidate mode. 17. Air units can airlift themselves. They don't need to "fit" in an airplane. They are airplanes. This fixes a ridiculous irony. Land units could move across the world and arrive at battle fronts faster than aircraft. Because they were being air-lifted by aircraft! 18. Balloon added. A:0 D:0 M:5 Fuel: 2 turns. Cost:30. This was added because 1) Chemistry gave nothing, 2) Play-testing revealed it was a lot of fun. The Balloon is a unit with 3 vision which can float out for one extra turn before it must return to a city, fortress, or airbase. All land units from Riflemen onward can shoot it down. All sea units from Ironclads onward can shoot it down. It is unreachable to more primitive units. Balloons cannot cross mountains. The Ballon is an early-mid-game unit that can play peek-a-boo over borders to collect intel. This "harmless" little unit does a lot to arouse the four i''s: ''incidents in diplomacy, intrigue, interactions, and intel. In reality, Balloons were effective units for collecting tactical intel, but only before firearms gained greater range and accuracy. This is a realistic unit that usually will make no major influence on the game. It was included because it increases intrigue, tactics, player interaction, and fun. T''he Balloon is unreachable by primitive land and sea units but doesn't block attacks on other units on the same tile.'' '''19. Jet Fighter added. A:6 D:5 M:24 Fuel:1 turn. Cost:70. The gap between World War II era Fighters and Stealth Fighters upset playable balance in Air/Land/Sea relations. It wasn't realistic either. The Jet Fighter fills the gap between Fighters and Stealth Fighters while restoring game balance: it adjusts for Fighters having no upgrades for too long, and more units which can counter them. More than just a step on the way to Stealth, the Jet Fighter's cost/defense ratio keeps it tactically relevant in the final end game. Requires '''Space Flight.' ''Like all Fighter-types in all MP rulesets, the Jet Fighter prevents land and sea units from attacking the tile it is on. 20. Jet Bomber added. A:15 D:1 M:18 Fuel: 3 turns. Cost:140. An unrealistic gap existed between World War II era bombers and Stealth Bombers. Jet Bombers' modern role is long range saturation bombing. M:18 Fuel:3 '''provides this role. This unit can "carpet bomb" – it can pillage tiles. The trade-off is high cost and low defense. The Jet Bomber provides a costly but possible response to strong air defences, Paratrooper incursions, and so on. ''Requires '''Space Flight.'' T''he Jet Bomber is unreachable by most land and sea units, but doesn't block attacks on other units on the same tile.'' 'III. Naval Units' 1. CanEscape Most Air and Sea units have a chance to escape Killstack when the defender of the stack gets killed. Explanation:'' Killstack created unrealistic scenarios in naval warfare, utterly breaking it. Fleets on open waters enjoy strength in numbers against smaller fleets. A single ship attacking an expensive mega-fleet should not be able to kill the entire fleet–especially since one attacker can't chase a fleet escaping in all directions. A chain of causes led to bad results: Huge cost of lost killstacks '→'' Fear of stacking ships → Lack of fleet co-defence '''→ High priced ships become isolated death-trap money-pits''' → ''Game degenerates into cheap unit-spam of Submarines and Fighters → Naval warfare becomes unrealistic, unplayable, and bye-bye. To improve all that, modern ships now take advantage of the new "CanEscape" feature, which was added to Freeciv precisely to solve these situations.'' Effect: '''''Killstack is still in effect, but diminished. When the "stack defender" is defeated, each separate unit in a “defeated stack” who has more moves remaining than the attacker, has a 50% chance to escape the Killstack. This has several interesting results: a) Ships are likely to have a 50% chance to escape Killstack if they are attacked before they moved, b) Ships attacked by Air units coming from a nearby base will probably not avoid Killstack, and c) Fleets, ships, or subs who "lie in wait" for a fleet to move into their waters, can surprise or "ambush" it and likely get a Killstack (perhaps after suffering some losses trying to eliminate the strongest fleet defender(s), since the game now allows for fleet co-defence.) Tactical consideration of fleets and fleet movement becomes a component of game-play with cat-and-mouse movement, hunting, and tactical maneuvers. Modern Naval Warfare is introduced to the game with a new level of tactics. This feature only applies to ships more advanced than the Caravel. 2. Naval Re-balance. Introduction: A flaw in sea unit balance was either a cheat, or an ugly patch for bad mechanics, or a massively incompetent mistake. Whatever it was, it was game-breaking. The giant mistake was that the Submarine's attack strength was backdoor buffed to be far higher than the original Civ I/II. This violated the design goal promising to be as identical as possible to original Civ I/II. But it's worse than that. The buff did the opposite of what future versions did to improve balance. In the evolution of Civilization™ balance, the Submarine from Sid Meier's original Civ I/II got small relative nerfs to achieve better balance. Yet in Freeciv Classic it was secretly buffed to the same offensive strength as the Battleship, but at ⅓ the cost and earlier in the tech tree! This made the cheap Submarine go up to a 97% chance of success against the Cruiser! This had to be fixed. This could be fixed by restoring the Sub back to original correct strength, or by introducing ASW capabilities that Civilization introduced in its own re-balance. Careful improvising around ruleset restrictions was required to mathematically adjust in a way that doesn't change how all the other ships relate to all the other land, sea, and air units. The solution that was finally chosen was selected because it was able to keep two positive outcomes instead of only one. Submarines and Destroyers were significantly rebalanced. As a result, sea balance is now restored. A Naval Rebalance Odds Chart is below. Submarine. A12 D2 FP2 HP28 M10. This unit was balanced in Civ I/II with a lower attack strength, but MP2 keeps the higher attack strength because it gives Submarines realistic hit-and-run-away capability against weaker ships. The huge excess over original strength is balanced another way: stronger warships get defence bonuses. Besides the OP attack strength, there was an underpowered issue. Air units had an OP ability to destroy Submarines. The Submarine's real ability to submerge to avoid attack had been totally ignored!! ''In '''MP2','' Submarines are now unreachable and immune from air attack', but can't stop Air units from attacking other ships on the same tile. Submarines in '''MP1' and MP2 can be compared as follows: The old MP1 Submarine was a wildly OP offensive unit that cost less than every other sea unit but was able to slaughter every sea unit regardless of cost, strength, or higher tech level. But it had an equally fatal flaw: after any attack, it was guaranteed to be found and killed by any Air unit in range. In spite of the fact that Destroyers should be the unit that Subs fear most, Destroyers were 0% effective in defending and only 48% effective in attacking (x̄=24%). In comparison, MP2 Submarines are strong offensive units with a cost-attrition advantage on surface ships, but may need numbers to achieve it: wolf-pack tactics. The loss of wild OP offensive strength is compensated with the capability to submerge and avoid all Air units. The Submarine's new nemesis is now the Destroyer, which is 35% effective in defending and 80% effective at attacking (x̄=58%). '''Destroyer. A5 D5 FP1 HP30 M12''. +1 strength. This is the first of two steps to fill a hole in naval balance. Formerly, unit evolution was Ironclad A4 D4 FP1 '>> Destroyer A4 D4 FP1 >> Cruiser A6 D6 FP2. The Destroyer is supposed to be an upgraded choice: 1) between Ironclad and Cruiser, 2) a cheaper support ship for Cruisers, Battleships, Carriers, 3) an anti-submarine unit. Its role is to scout, patrol and destroy. But, this "anti-sub ship” had a 100% chance of defeat against a sub attack and a 48% chance to defeat the unit it's supposed to hunt. Giving the Destroyer 2fp would be an easy fix, but that is OP at the early stage the Destroyer enters the game. The solution is to give the Destroyer a +1 buff to A5 D5 early on, and then upgrade it later. Here the result: The Destroyer has an 80% chance of success when attacking a Submarine, up from 48%. Its chance of defending against a Submarine goes from 0'''% to '''35%. Now, each is likely to kill the other when attacking. This creates cat and mouse games between Submarines and Destroyers. It plugs a huge hole that prevented Freeciv from having proper naval warfare. Cruiser. A6 D6 FP2 HP30 M11. The Cruiser gets a 2x ASW bonus to balance the Sub's hit-and-run buff. Odds of a successful Submarine attack against the more expensive Cruiser go from 97% to 43%. Keep in mind this represents a huge economic value:odds ratio in favour of Submarines: a 2v1 against a Cruiser yields an expected 21.5 shields lost for 80 killed. Surface ships now have to make up for this attrition ratio without using Fighters for easy kills. The previous attrition ratio of 1.5/80 was ridiculously unbalanced. AEGIS Cruiser. A8 D8 FP2 HP30 M11. The AEGIS gets a 2x ASW bonus to balance the Sub's hit-and-run buff. The cheaper older-tech Submarine still has good value economics: two will sink an AEGIS Cruiser, exchanging 50 shields of old tech to sink 100 shields of newer tech. Submarine strategists accustomed to the old imbalance should consider “wolf-pack tactics.” 3x defense against Air Attackers replaces the old 5x (it now requires 8 Fighters to sink an AEGIS instead of 14.) The AEGIS Cruiser gets realistic compensations for its change to 3x defence. It can now attack Air and Missile units directly. Besides anti-air and anti-missile being the real role of this ship. The playability benefit is a counter to the exploit of "fighter hovering" over sea units. The AEGIS is actually a missile cruiser, so it also gets another realistic ability: it can now carry 2 Cruise Missiles. The final result is increased realism, viability, and more playable balance for surface ships. An OP defense bonus is nerfed but remains strong, while these small buffs compensate that while improving balance and playability. Battleship. A12 D12 FP2 HP40 M10. The Battleship gets an ASW bonus to balance the Sub's hit-and-run buff. The adjustment means that 3 Submarines have a 65% chance of sinking the 160 shield Battleship, instead of 2 Submarines having an 84% chance. This deserves careful analysis for mathematical balance: The correction gives a 65% chance of losing 100 shields to sink 160 shields, instead of an 84% chance of losing 50 shields to sink 160 shields. Attrition ratio goes from game-breaking to a more realistic 1.39x in favour of the Submarine, closer to original Civ I/II. Carrier. A1 D9 FP2 HP40 M10. The Carrier has no change other than to its cargo classes to reasonably allow for new Unit Classes: Balloon and LandAirSea (i.e. Balloons, AAA, and Marines.) Movement point ratios fine tuned to use the refined accuracy that 2x move rates offer. A Battleship is just barely slower than a Cruiser. But because 1x units can't be set to half movement points, this was represented by the loss of a whole move point. Then, 2x moves doubled the surplus range of the Cruiser and other sea units. Ironically, a solution is built into 2x moves, as it creates a doubled scale that can tune units with "half moves." This is great for fixing units with lop-sided movement ratios. Battleship:Cruiser:Destroyer ratios now change from 4:5:6 (1x) to 10:11:12 (2x). This yields '''''the same difference in tile range and now gives almost the exact ratios for real life speeds. Finer tuning capabilities of 2x improve naval balance and playability. Starting with Ironclads, warships can pillage buoys. Letting warships pillage buoys is realistic and more playable. Be careful! Your opponent will see you doing it! A new component of realism, guessing, daring and danger! Triremes cost 30. The cost of 40 penalized early naval exploration and colonization far too heavily. This caused unrealistic avoidance of these positive game elements and resulted in worse game balance and playability. For nations who started on smaller islands, this goes beyond balance and playability – it was an issue of unfairness. The overall effect is increased exploration and colonization during Ancient Times. Galleons attack at 1. Galleons go from 0 attack to 1. The reasons: a) make the Galleon actually be a Galleon, b) don't abruptly shut off the attack ability of Triremes and Caravels when they upgrade. 'Naval Re-balance Odds Chart' . 3. Missile Destroyer added A:5 D:5 HP:30 FP:2 M:12 ''2x Defence'' against Subs + "AirAttacker" units. Capacity: 1'' Cruise Missile. Explanation: This unit upgrades the Destroyer after 'Rocketry '''is known. A flaw in sea unit upgrade progression had made the Destroyer identical in strength to the earlier Ironclad. This left a huge gaping hole: from mid-game on, there were no "medium strength" surface ships. Literally there was a jump from Ironclad (30x4x1='120 strength) to Cruiser (30x6x2='360' strength). Nothing in between. In theory, giving the Destroyer FP:2 'would have filled the gap to perfectly solve the problem (30x4x2='240 strength). It would allow the Destroyer to properly fulfill its tactical roles and missions well into the early-late game. Three things worked against that choice: 1) Conservatism to provide a familiar MP experience, 2) At the rather early phase of the game when the Destroyer enters, FP:2 would give it a short but wild "OP" heyday, 3) '''The little-used Cruiser would be used even less. The superior solution is to give the first Destroyer a small upgrade over Ironclad for mid-game relevance, then make it upgrade to the Missile Destroyer in the late game. This has five benefits: '''a) realism, b) finer tuning of naval balance, c) better playability, d) it mirrors the upgrade path for Cruisers, e) the upgraded unit has continued relevance until the end of the game – that is, during a period when Destroyers are the most commonly used surface ship in real modern navies, and during a period when Freeciv surface ships lacked balance. Effect: The late-game's modern surface ships become the trio of Carrier '+ '''Aegis '+ '''Missile Destroyer. The Destroyer is now able to continue its support roles of scouting, seek-and-destroy, and also the duties of regional patrolling and "incident police." 4. River-worthy ships Triremes, Caravels, Galleons, and Frigates can finally move on rivers. Explanation: When Multiplayer was made, Freeciv server lacked the feature to allow ships to travel rivers. It was added so that rulesets could improve playability and realism. This helps fix an issue: Freeciv Map Generator is known to create continental maps with too many unconnected lakes and seas. That prevented setting up games with significant land AND sea action. (Some say only Triremes should travel rivers. But Triremes were not the only ships that traveled rivers. Debate about which ships could travel on rivers is misguided. There were variable sizes in the same classes of ships, variable depths in rivers, and every nation '''''designed ships to travel on specific rivers. “River class” ships existed in all genres of Frigates, Galleons, and even Destroyers. It wastes time to debate things like "What is the average depth of a Freeciv river?" In MP2, the answer is "deep enough to increase trade and therefore deep enough for river traffic by wooden ships that historically used rivers." Effect: These four ships can travel by river. This is one of several ways that MP2 re-balances the Map Generator's tendency to make water too isolated and unconnected—this made ships tragically useless on continental maps. TIP: River access was extremely important in ancient civilization. A nation that puts no fortress or city on the entrance to its rivers was begging for trouble! Fortify a unit on your river to secure it, then make a fortress after discovering Construction. Use rivers to your advantage. Notes: (1) A city adjacent to a river can also make these four ships. (2) Ships don't get movement bonuses on rivers. 'III. Improvements and Wonders' '1. Pyramid gains its Classic effect' Food storage +25% in every city. Explanation: Making the Pyramid rapture the city who owns it was an attempt to lessen the gap between rapture and non-rapture governments. But it turned out to be overpriced and even less effective than the original effect (which was also underpowered.) Combining both effects gets closer to the desired result. Effect: Adding the Pyramid's original effect restores balance to non-rapture nations. It may provide a “vertical alternative” for cramped nations who can't expand territorially. In the early game, for roughly the cost of 4 Granaries, you get a “half Granary” in all cities. For late-game non-rapture governments, this Wonder can be thought of as a “viability patch.” The Pyramid is not meant to give equality to all governments, and you are cautioned that it doesn't. It corrects a “widening of the gap” that MP1 unintentionally aggravated. Perhaps it will allow a bit more flexibility in strategies and more flexible timing of revolutions. The restoration of this Wonder brings balance improvement and the option to use other governments. '2. Copernicus Observatory reduced to 100 shields.' Explanation: This Wonder was meant to enable an early science strategy. Formerly, it acted the same as a Library, but at 3.3x the cost! Sadly, when the cost was 200, an early science strategy was always 333% better off by buying 3 more Libraries, pocketing 20 shields, and skipping Astronomy. The incentive to get Astronomy and Copernicus wasn't there. Effect: Copernicus now costs 1.7x more than a Library with the same effect as one. Is it now conceivable to risk sacrificing other early techs and push for early Astronomy and Copernicus? '3. Great Wall improved.' Cost 275, obsolete by: Machine Tools. The more rapid pace of Multiplayer games usually makes the discovery of Metallurgy happen before Jesus! The Great Wall was undesirable because of accelerated obsolescence. By the time it was affordable, it was almost obsolete. Now the Great Wall is something to consider if you have more than 6 cities on a long border with Genghis Khan as your neighbor. '4. Wonders restored to full nationwide effect.' No longer “on the same continent”. Explanation: Prior to Multiplayer, Great Wonders were overpowered for a game with >20 players. Great Wonders were made into “even Smaller Wonders” – working only on the same continent. This broke Wonders on some maps. Effect: This will have no effect on most maps. On islands maps, most Wonders will no longer be useless. On multi-continent maps, this eliminates the disadvantage for players on islands or smaller continents. '5. Courthouse reworked and fixed.' Explanation: In MP1, most players never built Courthouses. Bad rounding formulas reduced corruption by an average of only 41%. ' In Democracy, '+1 content citizen was poor value compared to the Amphitheater. Also, MP1 rules removed Incite Revolt. '''This removed the main benefit of the building, yet '''MP1 kept the same inflated cost. The result was a broken Courthouse. The new Courthouse keeps true to the spirit of the building: to provide benefits in safety, stability, and law and order: *'Cost reduced to 45.' *'Corruption reduction' fixed — after rounding, the average is now 53% reduction. *'Eliminates “tile corruption” penalties '''during Despotism and Anarchy. *'+1 free unit upkeep''' from "greater law and order." *'Protection from hostile diplomatic actions improved 20% '(base 80% success rate goes to 60%). Effect: It now reduces corruption by ½''' instead of '''⅖. Since preventing revolt was half the Courthouse's value, the building gets a substitute compensation of +1 free unit upkeep. The removal of “tile corruption” means that in theory, Courthouses could provide the possibility for a Republic to revert to a temporary war-time Despotism. The new Courthouse helps restore the strategic menu of options that original MP1 accidentally flattened. This change provides a small balance improvement to governments who suffer corruption, though the cost of reducing that corruption is steep, and break-even is many turns out. '6. Granary costs 35 shields.' Explanation: The new cost is almost the same as 40. Was 40 perfect, or were the costs just rounded to the nearest 10? The truth is that a Granary is a vehicle for growth in non-rapture governments. Non-rapture governments are known to be underpowered from what they should be. The Granary was slightly overpriced. This slightly improves game balance between governments. Effect: An ever so slight improvement to governments that require food to grow. '7. Mass Transit' Costs 60 shields and increases base trade by +2. Explanation: It's unfortunate that Mass Transit was completely broken. It was the cost of 3 Engineers with upkeep equivalent to 2 Engineers. It reduced the effect of Population Pollution (not Production Pollution). Let's compare that to an Engineer. A single Engineer can clean pollution that came from Population OR Production in any nearby city. Mass Transit might prevent pollution in a single city if it came from Population (but it usually comes from Production.) When Pollution doesn't happen on a given turn, an Engineer can still irrigate, road, rail, make a fort, scout a border, etc. Engineers were ridiculously superior to Mass Transit. Too many Engineers ran around cleaning pollution while pollution prevention was never purchased. A major fix was needed. The ROI of the improvement is now positive. Realism is increased: Mass Transit increases mobility of citizens and generates small revenues from tickets. The Engineer is cheaper and has all the other benefits, so it remains a strong alternative: no classic strategies get broken. But the nation who goes for Mass Transit enjoys: a) +2 trade to recoup the extra 20 shield cost over an Engineer; b) Pollution control becomes preventative; c) Increased playability. Effect: Very little. Overall play remains the same. You can choose to pay a little more than it's worth to have less annoyance cleaning pollution tiles, exercise preventative control rather than reactive control, and slowly get a return on investment that's tiny compared to other investments. '7b. Recycling Center' Costs 70, upkeep 1, increases base production by +2. Explanation: Recycling Center was also broken. Recycling generates raw recycled materials which aid production. Therefore, this improvement slowly pays for itself by adding +2 shields to the city's base output. A useless improvement now becomes a modest investment that increases playability. Effect: Very little. The game remains the same, except some people might use this improvement. '8. Palace' Makes +1 Happy in Capital City. Effect: Capitals should typically be larger than other cities, and be more representative of national pride, wealth, and morale. But because of capital production bonuses, these cities often used tiles with less trade and couldn't grow as large. This small fix improves game mechanics for capital cities and makes the more special. Under non-representative government, it's now more feasible to unlock celebration bonuses in the capital city. Note: MP1 has an undocumented error: Courthouses were useless in cities with a Palace. This was also fixed. '9. Hanging Garden' Gives +2 luxury to its home city. 'Remains the same in all other ways. ''Explanation: Civ2civ3 claimed the improvement should have more effect in its home city than in other cities. It becomes more strategic to select which city will host the Wonder. Your most corrupt city that needs help to celebrate? Your city that uses lots of coal and gets no lux? Your border city that you want to send an aggressive unit from? Since all of this creates greater depth of strategy, this feature was imported into '''MP2. Effect: The city chosen for Hanging Gardens, if chosen right, might be able to go one higher in population than other cities. Or, if it was a problem city because of higher corruption or less trade, Hanging Gardens might be a medicine to balance empire happiness better. '10. Colossus expires with Automobile.' Explanation: Adjusting Colossus to expire with Automobile instead of Flight is becoming common in other rulesets. Superhighways provide a replacement for a city that might have become dependent on Colossus to support its population size or other functions. Effect: Makes Colossus enthusiasts happier. '11. Lighthouse' Improved and adjusted. +2 move, +1 vision, obsolete: Miniaturization. Cost: 170. Explanation: Lighthouse was OP in Classic rules. 200 shields gave ships +1 move and +1 vet. MP1 overcorrected: it removed the vet bonus, accelerated pace to go obsolete sooner, but kept the same cost. Then 2x moves came to MP1 without giving 2x to Lighthouse. The most valuable bonus was eliminated, the secondary bonus became half strength, the cost remained the same, and it expired much sooner. Careful thought is needed to save the spirit of the Wonder. Reducing cost is a no-brainer – except that with only ¼ of its original value intact, the cost would be so cheap that Lighthouse would be too common. To fix it right, the cost was slightly reduced to 170, the bonus corrected for 2x moves, the expiration delayed, and +1 vision replaces loss of +1 vet. These slight corrections make Lighthouse usable. Mission accomplished. Obsolete by: Miniaturization. '12. ReWonder 2.0 ' Five new Wonders added + old Wonders made viable. Formerly, Multiplayer was less than wonderful in how Wonders functioned. There is no mistake though – It made enormous improvements over Classic rules. The Classic mechanic was so messed up that the first competitive communities were justified to play games with Wonders turned off. In Classic, exclusive Great Wonders gave OP benefits to the nation who got them first, making a horrible imbalance in any game with many humans, but especially in games where there were more players than available Wonders! Meanwhile, trade routes from Caravans had a far greater ROI than anything else. Expert strategy was 'golden pathed' into Caravans and trade routes. Strategic creativity was limited and repressed. The Multiplayer ruleset made huge improvements by eliminating OP Trade Routes and making most wonders Small Wonders. Caravans were converted from a "Golden Path OP trade generator" into a Wonder-mechanism for diverse strategies and benefits. With Wonders being as expensive as they are, each civilization had to pick a limited few to uniquely define their national strengths. This is excellent and exactly in the spirit of the game. The ROI for Caravans-to-Wonders was not OP like Caravans-to-Trade Routes. Investment into units or other strategies could be done in ways to rival investments into Wonders. It was a huge step forward: replace OP Golden Path with strategic diversity and creativity. It sounds great in theory, until years of play-testing revealed it was not yet ideal: The ReWonder 1.0 Project made some Wonders overpriced or useless, or they expired too soon when playing with the highly accelerated technology pace in massive multiplayer. Out of the portfolio of many Wonders, there were only a limited number of "good Wonders". Experts usually got the same Wonders. It was reminiscent of what we don't want: a 'golden path' of expert strategy down a single path. We want to be surprised and appreciative how different personalities cook up different brilliant strategies, and learn and grow from what we see. For MP2, a splendid ReWonder 2.0 Project was conceived to evolve the vision: *Wonders which were hardly useful from faster tech pace and early expiration, were given more time. *Wonders which were formerly OP but then nerfed to be underpowered, are re-balanced to an optimum. *Wonders which became overpriced after a justified nerf, are reduced in cost. *Wonders which were still OP or inappropriate in massive multiplayer, completely changed to something else. *'Uniquely Define your Civilization'. Before, everyone picked the same 3-6 Wonders in approximately the same order. With there now being double the choices, some would assume this doubles the number of Wonder strategies. But combinatorial mathematics make for literally thousands of unique new strategies. Four new Wonders were imported from Civ2civ3 then carefully adjusted for MP2, and a fifth was invented from scratch. Four old Wonders were then re-balanced to be useful. Now, instead of half of Wonders being useful and 'Golden Path' among experts, we have a new profile for the mechanics of how Wonders affect the game: All original Wonders were balanced to be potentially useful, plus five new Wonders added. The net effect of this is that instead of 1/3 of the Wonders being useful and always targeted in special order, there is an array of over double the 'selectable' wonders which are all useful. Instead of experts deciding on the same few Wonders in targeted order, they now have to pick a limited handful from a larger portfolio, all of which are useful, combining to create unique national character and strategic profile for each nation. This has a HUGE effect on creative strategy and finally achieves Civilization's original goal and mission of creating a game that lets each ruler create a DIFFERENT KIND OF CIVILISATION with DIFFERENT NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND STRENGTHS, yet if played skillfully, roughly equivalent and balanced in overall strength. All of this was done while maintaining the cost-values properly, so that some nations can explore strategies using no Wonders (or perhaps only 1 Wonder.) '12A. Ecclesiastical Palace' Added from Civ2civ3. Cost: 110. Explanation: After Mysticism, you can have an empire with two capitals and two palaces. Except as noted below, the Ecclesiastical Palace functions exactly like a normal Palace. Cities will suffer corruption rates based on which palace is closest. The original Palace gives a bonus to city production, but this one gives a bonus to the gold income. This improvement helps governments who suffer corruption. This provides greater possible diversity to create more complex multi-geographic empire arrangements, and it is similar to events that sometimes happened in ancient civilizations. It can equalize fairness for a player who suffered from bad maps, bad positioning, bad luck, or migration/colonization issues. It's an option for a player who suffers more corruption from geography or form of government, and allows "bi-geographic" strategies for non-democracies. Effect: This is not a normal Wonder that most people would be advised to get in most cases. It provides a balance mechanism to counter bad luck in map positioning, encourage more diverse strategies like remote colonization, and helps support the possibility for governments other than Democracy to be used in the late game. '12B. Temple of Artemis' Added from Civ2civ3, but modified. Cost: 250. Explanation: The goddess Artemis gives a subtle mystic mysterious effect to those who grasp her harmonious ways. But she confers little benefit to those who are more rugged in their approach. This Wonder gives one shield, one luxury, one science, and one gold, to every city with a Temple. You get a tiny bit of everything but must invest in Temples and a hefty 250 shields. You will get no exploitable advantage in any specific thing that can be leveraged. This Wonder requires a delicate “Artemisian” strategy to leverage the benefits. If you think it's lame then this isn't the Wonder for you, but it is competitively valued for those who will study how to milk its benefits. Effect: A mystical mysterious Wonder is highly appropriate for game intrigue and interest. It gives intangible benefits like improving flexibility, ability to change strategies gracefully, and lubricate game mechanics. The player with this Wonder will find the whole game ever so slightly easier and less exacting, but not in any definitive way. The Temple of Artemis allows flexibility and creativity in finding slight and subtle ways to get benefits. Obsolete by: Computers. '12C. Mausoleum of Mausolos' Added from Civ2civ3. Cost: 200. Explanation: A grand structure of beauty and memoriam to keep alive the enlightened values of the ancestor king Mausolos. In every city in the empire, the Mausoleum provides one content citizen for each City Walls and/or Courthouse. This Wonder is highly unusual and certainly not for everyone, but a player who marches to a different beat can combine these benefits if they have a particular style of play. Obsolete by: Radio. Effect: This Wonder confers absolutely no benefit in any city that has neither City Walls nor a Courthouse. Both of those are costly requirements. Nevertheless, if your strategy already uses one or both of those improvements, then this Wonder provides a similar bonus to other "Happy Wonders", but with a later expiration. '12D. Statue of Zeus' Added from Civ2civ3. Cost:100. Explanation: Zeus is king of the gods for a reason. His powers are optimally effective in creating order, efficiency, obedience, and unified discipline. The statue of Zeus brings the spirit of this godly culture to your citizens. In every city in your empire, Zeus makes 1 citizen content from military activity. In the home city, it also gives +1 happy citizen and +4 upkeep of military units. The discovery of Tactics makes the Statue of Zeus obsolete. Effect: This provides a way for a Republic to erect a statue to rattle sabres and get popular support for military acitivities. An extra content citizen in every city allows a Republic to engage in foreign wars. '12E. Genghis Khan' Genghis Khan's Equestrian School: Cost: 150. +1 move 'for all mounted units prior to Cavalry. ''Explanation: To increase a game's strategic diversity, a tried-and-true path game designers use is to look at concepts that exist in some mechanics, and transfer them to other mechanics. For example, following this method, the original designers got three diverse options out of one idea: Wonders were made for Trade (Colossus), Production (King Richard's), and Food (Pyramid). Genghis Khan's Equestrian School is like a "Lighthouse" for mounted units. The cost is 150. This realistically represents some civilizations' historical specialization into equestrian lifestyle and warfare. It increases the ability of nations to “specialize” their character and strategies. It makes other nations 'never too sure' of the unknown world out there. Cavalry units do not get the bonus. The Wonder expires for all existing units upon the discovery of Mobile Warfare. Effect: For the rather high cost of 8 horsemen, a nation may specialize in an early- and early-mid-game mounted warfare strategy, getting an advantage in equestrian movement and tactics. '''IV. Miscellaneous '1. Gold Resource' Special tile “Gold” goes from 0/1/6 to 0/1/8. In overall values of F+P+T, mathematical modeling of 'true tile value' showed that Gold tied with Iron for last rank among all specials. This is counter-intuitive, as people think Gold ought to be a special find worth fighting for. Making Gold a top 3 resource requires 0/1/10, but creates possible exploits. 0/1/8 upgrades it to middle rank among special resources. '2. Illegal Action fixed.' Bug for Illegal Action movement penalty removed. Making a unit lose ⅓ move after an accidental keypress penalized people on less ergonomic devices, and punishes innocent testing to see if an action is legal. “Change Home City” sometimes gave a penalty when legally performed. All penalties are removed now. '3. Transform time for Swamp to Ocean' Changed from 36 to 12. Map Generator gives two extreme choices. You can create a map of many islands, or a continent with unconnected lakes. The first choice favors naval units over land units; the second, land over naval. Ideally, all units could participate in a game. Before, landlocked nations couldn't participate in sea wars, often due to about 4 tiles blocking their lake's connectivity to other water. Assuming some were swamp tiles, we had Transform time of 4x36 = 144 worker-turns. Now, 4x12=48: completed by 3 Engineers in 8 turns. This change lets sea units rise in importance, a step closer to balanced land/sea games. Let's analyse realism. Before, making a hill under a city took ⅓ the time as dredging a swamp. But dredging swamps takes less time and was done even before the industrial age. Why was the easiest transformation set to be the hardest ?! If a change is more realistic, more playable, and steps toward “the Holy Grail” of land/sea balance, then it's a no-brainer. '4. Transform time for Grasslands to Hills' Changed from 12 to 15. Some have complained about players using 6 Engineers to convert a conquered Grasslands city into a Hills city in only minutes around TC. It aggravates the already pro-defensive skew toward a “stalemate” nature in late game wars. They say changing an existing city to instantly have Hills under it should not be possible because it's wildly unrealistic and has less playability. Others say this is a method for expert tacticians to outsmart opponents. When there is debate on both sides, we usually leave the rules untouched. However, it goes against the principles of this ruleset to leave something unchanged if it is all three of the following: a) unrealistic, b) “quasi-RTS-exploitative”, c) decreases playability. The 25% increase in worker-turns may not seem much, but it should drastically reduce TC exploits. '5. Well-Digger' The new Well-digger is a "patch unit" that gives fair balance to nations who have no nearby water. In continental games, perhaps 15% of the time, a nation will get a start with no nearby water for irrigation. This random luck can ruin the rest of the game. The solution was to create a unit that can be quickly created to provide a water source. To prevent abuse, the unit's upkeep is not justified if there are already available water sources. The high upkeep encourages quick disbanding after a new water source is created. To prevent exploitation, the unit's abilities expire after discovery of Alphabet or Pottery. A Well-Digger can irrigate any Low-Lands tile (not Hills or Mountains), or make a "well" (a river) on any tile. To dig a well requires "Change Extra Target" to "River" and then selecting "Build Road." You will know if it succeeded if his activity icon resembles a golden shovel. The typical Despotic city will need at least +2 Food and +2 Production to support a Well-Digger. The Well-Digger will not work if: 1) He is outside your borders. 2) 'He dies off from the city not having enough surplus for his upkeep, '''3) '''You discovered Alphabet or Pottery. This is not a careless unit to fool around with. It requires careful thought and is carefully designed to only be useful to a nation with no water, in its first turns of existence. '6. Canals The Engineering tech discovery lets Workers and Engineers dig the Canal tile improvement. The only effect of a Canal is that it lets ships pass through. (Unlike rivers, they can't be used for irrigation, do not give a trade bonus, and do not give bonus movement.) A canal can only be built if it is adjacent to a nearby lake or ocean tile. This means canals are usually a maximum length of 1 or 2 tiles, though they can be much longer if they connect through lakes. If you're willing to commit the time, terrain transforming can be done to sustain a longer canal's water source. Canals balanced an issue where Map Generator gave two extreme choices: Islands games favoring sea units over land units, or Continental games favoring land units over sea units. Now, on a continental map, it is possible for landlocked nations to dig canals to open up shipping lanes and naval combat. This is a big step toward the goal of featuring land and sea warfare together. A Canal takes the same length of time as a Mine to complete, and can only be done on low-lands tiles, and only adjacent to lake or ocean. These three factors limit canal length. '7. Foreign Wonders.' Caravans/Freight can build Foreign Wonders. This increases depth of diplomatic negotiation possibilities. '8. Helicopters in Fortresses.' Helicopters may use Fortresses as bases to rest and repair. Formerly, this unit lost hit points for every turn it was resting in a Fortress, until it died. In reality, it is not a true airplane and needs no airstrip. It can now park at a friendly base without dying there, to rest and repair. 9. Expelling. The ability to expel a foreign unit rather than kill it, has long been missing from game play. This feature increases diplomatic depth and options. Any non-military unit may be expelled from your nation, which sends it back to its home country: * Settlers, Well-Digger, Workers, Engineers * Diplomat, Spy * Caravan, Freight * Explorer * AWACS To expel an Air unit requires a Fighter, Jet Fighter, or Stealth Fighter. To expel a Land unit requires any Land-based military unit except Warriors. Units on Mountains terrain may not be expelled. Units must be alone on a tile to be expelled. 10. Capturing. The ability to capture units adds extra depth, especially in the early game where many players are hermetic. '''Capturing a unit converts its nationality to your own. Only the following units may be captured, which converts them into your own units: * '''Workers * Explorer * Caravan * Freight To capture a unit requires a foot soldier or mounted unit whose attack value is 3''' or higher. Units on Mountains terrain may not be captured. Units must be alone on a tile to be captured. '''10. Steal Map Fragments. A portion of the explored world map of the target nation will be stolen, giving you vision of fragments of their world map. The fragments are not "chunks" or sub-regions, but rather, a sparse "speckled" revelation of the target nation's entire world map. Multiple thefts will successively reveal more and more of the target nation's map, with diminishing returns. This feature increases the richness of the game's diplomatic actions. Diplomats doing the action are spent, while spies have two choices: "Steal Map Fragments" and "Steal Map Fragments Escape." The former will spend the unit but have a higher chance of success (default base setting is 80%), while the latter has a 50% chance and a successful escape of the spy to the nearest domestic city. 11. Granary Food Storage Capped at 70 maximum. '''In MP1, the larger cities got, it became progressively more difficult to grow them in non-rapture governments. This is a deliberate and intentional dynamic that should be preserved. However, past 70 it becomes far too punitive against non-rapture governments, and a mere disadvantage becomes truly uncompetitive, unfeasible, and unbalanced. Capped at a grain store of '''70, a city with +3 food grows in: * 24 turns ... with no improvements * 18 turns ... with Pyramids * 12 turns ... with Granary * 6 turns ... with Granary and Pyramids Compared to rapturing every turn without needing Granary nor Pyramid, this remains a strong enough penalty for non-rapture governments. The net effect of this modification still preserves the classical mechanics, advantages and disadvantages of the distinct governments, while smoothing some extreme edges that were notoriously unfair and imbalanced.